


at the end of infinity with you.

by katarama



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alcohol, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Kissing, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 03:18:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13650342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: “Just trust me,” Lardo says.  Nursey could argue with that, could point out that the last time they were drinking in Lardo’s studio was in the rush of ‘holy shit we actually finished this thesis’ relief, and that neither of them was particularly okay at the time.But he won’t argue it, not when he’s had two years full of proof that he could trust Larissa Duan with his life.





	at the end of infinity with you.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [palateens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/palateens/gifts).



> Pau prompted me Lardo x Nursey + I was just an only child of the universe / and then I found you / you are the sun and I am just the planets / spinning around you

“studio at ten xoxo” the first text reads.  

“Bring booze” says the second, ten minutes later.

“also my phone charger” comes after another five minutes.

Nursey waits a few more minutes before he responds.

“r u ok??????”

“Just trust me,” Lardo replies, and, well.  Nursey could argue with that, could point out that the last time they were drinking in Lardo’s studio was in the rush of ‘holy shit we actually finished this thesis’ relief, and that neither of them was particularly okay at the time.  

But he won’t argue it, not when he’s had two years full of proof that he could trust Larissa Duan with his life.

“PBR or the good stuff?” Nursey asks, knowing exactly what the answer will be.

It’s full of incredibly expressive emojis, and Nursey can’t help but grin when it comes in.

* * *

Nursey can hear other voices and loud, throaty laughter in the other studios, but when he knocks on the door to Lardo’s, all he hears is cursing.  He stands there for a minute, four beers he’s too young to carry outside his backpack clinking and sloshing as he shifts his weight between the balls of his feet.  In hindsight, he probably should’ve put a t-shirt or towel or something soft in there to muffle the noises, but it wasn’t really his focus when he was cramming shit in there, already four minutes late.

Finally, the door cracks and Lardo’s head pops out.  “Hey,” she says, smiling at him broadly and swinging the door open wide for him to come in.  “Welcome to the annual ‘fuck, graduation is coming for the seniors, lets get shitfaced in our art studios’ night.”

“I’m not sure how that’s any different than literally any other Friday night in the art building,” Nursey teases.  Lardo snorts, holding her hand out in demand for her charger.  Nursey fishes it out of the front pocket on his backpack and hands it to her, leaning down and placing a quick peck on her lips as she moves in to grab it.

“I can’t believe that’s the chirp you went for,” Lardo says, grinning up at him.  “It was all primed for an ‘art kids are terrible at branding’ chirp and everything.”

“Art kids are  _ also _ terrible at branding,” Nursey agrees.  

Lardo gets on her tiptoes to kiss him again, longer and slower this time.  From the taste of Lardo’s mouth, Nursey can tell that, for a night based on getting drunk, she doesn’t actually seem that intent on getting drunk; she hasn’t even started yet.  It makes him a little warm in his chest thinking about the fact that she waited for him.

When Lardo pulls away, she spins around to plug her phone in on the floor by her bean bags, humming.  Her hair is a beautiful mess, her hands smudged with dried neon yellow paint from one of her final projects.  “I’ll tell you,” Lardo says, “that I had much better names to offer than this.  I came up with all of them high, and I don’t remember most of them anymore, but they were  _ excellent _ .”

Nursey raises an eyebrow.  “I wouldn’t buy that if it weren’t for the fact that your title of your thesis was actually a semi-decent idea, even if you measure it by sober idea standards.”

“Exactly,” Lardo tells him, vindicated.  She scrolls through her phone for another minute before tapping and waiting.  “We’re listening to early 2000s music, Fall Out Boy or premade mix?”

“Folie à Deux,” Nursey says without a second’s thought.  He puts his backpack down by the door and pulls out two of the beers, sticking the other two in Lardo’s mini-fridge.  

Lardo tsks at him, scrolling through her phone again.  “That’s 2008, not early 2000s.”

“Now you’re just splitting hairs,” Nursey protests as he flops down on one of Lardo’s bean bag chairs, but Lardo’s just grinning.  “This was a ploy to listen to From Under The Cork Tree again, wasn’t it?”

“2005 counts as early 2000s,” Lardo says, innocently.  The music starts coming from her phone at full volume, and Lardo plops down next to Nursey on the bean bag chair, leaning into his shoulder.  “Bottle-opener?”

“It’s mid-2000s at  _ best _ ,” Nursey insists, but he doesn’t actually mind that much.  He loves From Under The Cork Tree, and he knows by the time they hit Dance, Dance he’ll be belting out all the words.  “No bottle opener, they’re twist-offs.  When I said the good stuff, we weren’t talking the actual good stuff.”

“Works for me,” Lardo says.  She twists the top off and tosses it into the trash, putting her beer pong hand-eye coordination to good use.  Nursey follows her lead, missing the trash can entirely.  Lardo waits until he decides to give up and leave it there to pick up later before she reaches up behind her to hit the lights.  Nursey is about to protest, to ask her what exactly she’s doing; drinking with the lights off never sounded like anyone who knows Nursey’s greatest idea.

“Shhhh, give it a sec,” Lardo says, very close and loud in the small studio.  

The music still pours from Lardo’s phone, Patrick Stump’s voice seemingly filling up every inch of space.  It reminds Nursey of when he was younger and used to listen to records with his mom, closing his eyes and listening for the familiar scratches of the needle on the very old records.

“Now look up,” Lardo whispers in his ear.  

When Nursey does, he’s surprised to see the ceiling lit up in the form of small dots arranged in constellations, his eyes slowly making sense of pinpoints of light clustered together to make stars and planets.  His breath catches as he looks, and Lardo presses close to his side.

“Wow,” he says, his voice full of awe at he feels at what he’s certain is her work.  “When did you have the time to do all this?”

“‘S one of my final projects,” Lardo says.  “One of those classes about painting the natural world that they let me squeak by as my last science credit.  It’s nothing, it’s not-”

“It is a big deal,” Nursey says seriously.  He fumbles in the dark for her phone, presses the home key and silences the music.  He wants to take his time with this, to give it the appreciation it deserves.  “They let you do it on the ceiling of the room?”

“Nah, it’s on canvases, I just hung them there for space.”  With Lardo’s phone still lit up, Nursey can see the gentle glow of light on her face, the way her smile is soft and sheepish.  “You’d’ve noticed the ceiling is lower than usual if you looked, some of the guys helped me a rack together.  I just didn’t.  Want you to see it until it was done.”

Nursey can hear the nerves in her voice, and right now, warm and comfy with his girlfriend at his side, the stars above them and the lights dimmed, Nursey can’t find the best words to express how proud of her he is.  Nursey’s hand finds Lardo’s cheek, cupping the skin gently as he leans in slowly, kissing her.  They bump noses at first when Lardo’s phone light suddenly dims, and they dissolve into laughter, Lardo’s breath hot against Nursey’s skin.  Neither bothers to turn the light back on, though, because there’s something to this that Nursey will spin over and over in his head and then onto paper, kissing the girl he loves on a bean bag chair under the dim, neon light of hand-painted stars.  Her chapstick is waxy against his lips and her mouth tastes like booze, but the kiss deepens quickly, and Nursey gets wrapped up in the feeling.

“You’re really talented,” Nursey says when Lardo finally reaches up to turn the light back on, his eyes squinting until they adjust.  

“We’re both talented,” Lardo agrees.  “Samwell’s Motherfucking Fine Arts Power Couple.”  Nursey doesn’t add on what they’re both thinking, that they won’t be the Fine Arts Power Couple for long.  That this is going to be over, soon, that in just another week, Lardo will be graduating and Nursey will be heading back to NYC.

Tonight isn’t about that.

Tonight is about arms wrapped around each other, getting down to the bottoms of their first beers and keeping on going, turning the lights back off so they can pretend that they’re drinking under the stars that Nursey can’t see back home through the lights of the city.  Tonight is about the two of them creating their own little world, if only for the night, with hushed, intimate conversations and loud, goofy laughs that they don’t have to be ashamed of.

Tonight is about both of them knowing that, no matter what, in this moment, in this year, they have each other.

Tonight, under the hundreds of stars Lardo fit onto canvases, neither of them is alone.

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr [here](https://polyamorousparson.tumblr.com/).


End file.
